A local father who sued a school district because he wants his 5-year-old son kept away from books with LGBTQ characters has scored a win in court.

A Boston federal judge recently granted a preliminary injunction for the father, Alan L., whose son J.L. attends kindergarten in Lexington Public Schools.

The judge ordered that the school district and Joseph Estabrook Elementary School “make reasonable efforts to ensure that J.L. is not taught or otherwise exposed to the content of the Identified Books, whether in the classroom or any other school setting.”

“… Defendants shall make reasonable efforts to ensure that J.L. is not taught or otherwise exposed to all Other LGBTQ+ Educational Materials identified by plaintiff, whether in the classroom or any other school setting,” added U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV.

The case covers a parent’s constitutional right to opt their child out of certain classroom materials on the First Amendment grounds that they conflict with his religious beliefs.

The father Alan L. is described as a “devout Christian” whose religious beliefs include traditional views on sexual orientation and gender identity. He opposes the content of certain books regarding sexual orientation and gender identity that are part of the kindergarten curriculum.

In the lawsuit, he argued that he has the right to be alerted before materials are shown to his son, and to opt his child out of classroom activities involving those materials.

“They include books that many parents might find appropriate or innocuous (such as those simply depicting gay and lesbian couples with children) and others that might be considered provocative or inappropriate for very young children (such as those depicting cross-dressing men or gays and lesbians in black-leather outfits),” the federal judge wrote in his ruling. “But the question presented here is not whether the viewpoints of plaintiff, or those of the school officials, are ‘correct’ as a matter of religious faith or political or social belief.

“Nor is it whether the materials should be part of the kindergarten curriculum for other students,” the judge added. “… Instead, this case presents a narrow question: whether these specific defendants have provided the required notice and opportunity to review materials that this specific plaintiff may find objectionable, so that he may opt his child out of classroom instruction that violates his religious beliefs.”

The father in his lawsuit presented 10 books that are part of the Lexington school’s kindergarten curriculum.

For instance, the book Families, Families, Families! features illustrations of anthropomorphized animals in various family arrangements. It includes a picture of two roosters wearing neckties with the caption, “Some children have two dads,” and a picture of two koalas with the caption, “Some children have two mothers.” The book ends with the line, “If you love each other, then you are a family.”

The father was seeking a preliminary injunction on the basis that the school district was violating the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

The judge ended up ruling: “Plaintiff is likely to show that the materials at issue burden his free-exercise rights by ‘posing a very real threat of undermining the religious beliefs and practices’ he wishes to instill in J.L., and defendants are not likely to show that their decision not to provide plaintiff with notice and the opportunity to opt J.L. out of these lessons survives strict scrutiny. Plaintiff is therefore likely to succeed on the merits of his First Amendment claim.”

The father also showed that he’s “likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of a preliminary injunction,” the judge added.

The father filed the lawsuit with the help of the Massachusetts Liberty Legal Center and the American Center for Law and Justice.

“This order represents a massive win for parents across the Commonwealth,” the Massachusetts Family Institute wrote. “Public school districts will now be on notice that playing fast-and-loose with parental rights will expose them to significant liability.”

The preliminary injunction will remain in place while the lawsuit is pending.

The attorneys for the school district said they “look forward to aggressively defending against these claims.”

“Lexington Public Schools has had a policy of allowing religious-based opt-outs from Day One,” the lawyers, Douglas I. Louison and Alexandra ‘Sasha’ M. Gill, said in a statement on behalf of LPS. “The Supreme Court made it clear that depicting the mere existence of potentially-offensive values or lifestyles is not enough to warrant an opt-out, and that it is the messaging associated with those potentially-offensive materials that determines whether an opt-out is warranted.

“In this case, the materials are not associated with any LGBTQ+-focused curriculum or paired instruction, nor was the student even exposed to the two books at issue,” wrote the attorneys, from Louison, Costello, Condon & Pfaff, LLP.

The lawyers added that the breadth of some parents’ opt-out requests poses a problem for school districts.

“When parents request their student be opted out of broad swaths of the public school curriculum — as was the case here — it puts the burden on the schools to presume what materials might be objectionable,” they wrote. “This is not like a student with a peanut allergy, where the implementation of an accommodation to protect the student is reasonably clear.

“Schools are burdened enough without having to scour the pages of a storybook for potentially gay-appearing characters,” they added. “At what point, for instance, is a character’s hair cut too short to presume they are a woman? Are two men sitting together at a restaurant presumed to be gay, or might they just be friends? There are innumerable scenarios like these, and schools are now being forced to make near-impossible judgments.”

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